Gaunt

Either I’m hard wired to abuse myself or the outside stimuli are truly addictive, overpowering my better nature. I may be able to change, but at any given moment I feel stuck. I guess that’s the nature of moments. That’s how you categorize or define them as moments. I’ve thrown down the gauntlet. All things bad throw down their gauntlet. They set up their challenge. The question becomes will I take it lying down, or respond in kind with my own gauntlet, my own glove? When I go to Publix there are many bad choices making themselves known and available. That is their version of a gauntlet. Like a temptation. But they are much more do or die, life or death. Like the challenge a gauntlet represents. It’s the other kind of challenge. A duel. All these inanimate objects are speaking to me of duels. Good things are more quietly offering up their own un-knobby gauntlets. They whisper, Do you want to write? Take a walk? Do some yoga? Clean? Cook? Meditate? Be in a quiet space? So how will I respond to them? They pose the opposite challenge. They’re challenging me to pass them by, to ignore them. I often feel I can’t distinguish between the good and bad. But maybe I’m just temporarily blindsided. The bad things like to pretend they aren’t bad. They like to dress themselves up.